Thursday, October 24, 2013

Video Could Be Key In Trial Of Crip Charged In Deadly 2011 Brighton Beach Boardwalk Shootings

On June 9th, five people were shot on the Park Department's Brighton Beach Boardwalk including 16-year old East Harlem girl, Tysha Jones who was tragically killed. Iloune Driver, a 21-year-old Crip from East New York, Brooklyn, shown here being arrested, was charged and is on trial for second-degree murder for the shooting that killed the innocent teenager and wounded four others. (Photo: Todd Maisel/New York Daily News)

Over the twelve weeks leading up to that incident there had been twelve shootings, including five deaths, and more than a dozen stabbings and muggings and numerous sexual assaults in parks. And since January there had been more than 150 arrests on park land including 98 in Union Square Park alone and the Summer had yet to begin.

A few seconds of video evidence may determine the courtroom fate of a gangbanger accused of spraying bullets over a jam-packed boardwalk in Brooklyn two years ago, killing an innocent teenage girl and wounding four others, according to the New York Daily News.

Iloune Driver, 21, whose trial for second-degree murder began Tuesday, fired at a rival in Brighton Beach on a sunny day in June 2011, fatally striking a bystander, Tysha Jones, 16, who was hanging out with friends, a prosecutor said.

Chaos ensued at the Brighton Beach Boardwalk when a fight erupted into a shooting.

(Photo: Patrick Q. Barr for NY Daily News)

“All she was doing was going to the beach,” prosecutor Janet Gleeson said in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

“But those were the last moments of her life.”

No weapons or ballistic evidence tie Driver — an avowed Crip who has the words “True Blue” tattooed across his chest — to the crime.

Gleeson said two witnesses identified Driver as the gunman. She said shots were fired as a group of Crips taunted a rival crew of Bloods.

“That’s what it was all about — gang stupidity,” Gleeson said.

But defense lawyer Mario Romano argued that video of the shooting’s immediate aftermath refutes the witnesses’ statements that Driver was on the sand when he fired; the video, the lawyer said, shows Driver on the boardwalk a few seconds after the crowd begins to scramble for cover.

Romano said Driver was “running away from the mayhem, like everybody else.”

Driver was apprehended by police as he entered the subway. He wasn’t initially charged, but named others as the assailants, Gleeson said. A witness called a police department tip line a few days later and identified him as the shooter.